When I was in college, my friend Devin died in my arms.

He didn’t actually die. But it certainly felt that way.

We were taking a nine day, 100 hour Wilderness Emergency Responder course in Portland, Oregon, and each of us took turns attempting rescues. Devin was the victim.

He was lodged in between two trees on a steep slope in the snow, and I was given three minutes to attempt to save his life. I was instructed to stabilize his spine, ensure his breathing, and move him to a safe location.

When I arrived on the scene, on a steep slope in wet snow, I panicked. Devin was an acting student. He struggled, then began to spam. Full of adrenaline, I attempted to pull him out from between two trees. He began frothing at the month and began to spasm.

By the time our wilderness survival teacher intervened, fifteen minutes had passed, I was crying, and Devin had “died.”

Slow is smooth and smooth is fast

There’s a phrase, coined by the Navy SEALs, that “Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.” When you slow down, you can operate more effectively. That results in fewer mistakes and better, faster outcomes.

When I first found Devin in the snow, I rushed in. Instead, had I taken an extra breath to assess the situation, I might have found a simpler, safer solution. It took our instructor showing me that I could have slid him downhill to realize my mistake which killed him.

Slow down to limit mistakes

Had I slowed down in those first pivotal moments with Devin, I might have been able to save him. Instead, I panicked because I had limited time and he was face down in the snow.

One moment of slowing down can make all the difference when it matters most.

Savoring

There are things you don’t want to do as quickly as possible:

• Making love.
• Eating a great meal.
• Holding a baby.

But in the pursuit of speed, it is easy to forget the value of savoring an experience.

Chunking

When we slow down, we can perceive more.

Slow allows us to bring more attention, which allows for chunking – the process of grouping small pieces of information together into larger chunks.

Chunking allows us to process information more quickly.

Slow is forward momentum

Slow is usually considered negative. Slow is associated with laziness, procrastination, and lack of clear priorities.

Actually, though, when we are going slowly, we aren’t – by definition – stopped or blocked.

Going slowly requires action; forward momentum. It isn’t possible to both go slowly and be frozen or indecisive.

Speed

In business and in life, speed is a competitive advantage. In Silicon Valley, there’s talk of a 10X engineer – someone who can do the work of 10 other employees by building more effectively, finding shortcuts, and making fewer mistakes. I opened my old restaurant Robin’s Cafe in 3 weeks, which is largely considered impossible within the industry.

We all have the same 24 hours in a day. Being able to do more in less time makes you more effective.

But to this day, I get adrenaline coursing through my body when I remember Devin on that snowy hillside. Devin “died” in my arms because I was in a rush and panicked.

Speed does matter, but so too does slowing down, assessing, and engaging strategically.

I carry a picture of Devin in my medical kit to this day.

Until next week,
Robin

In 2003, I broke my neck on a trampoline. That sounds extreme, but it is actually fairly common. Walk into any gymnastics gym in the world and someone will have had a similar injury. But that injury, and my journey since, have shaped my lifelong obsession with movement.

Shortly after the injury, I graduated from college. With my prestigious college degree, I proceeded to get a job bussing tables. I wanted to return to athletics – gymnastics, acrobatics, ballet – but first needed to get out of pain.

The mother of a college friend worked with special needs kids, and taught workshops about pain relief for adults. As it turned out, that woman would come to change my life.

Over the next few years, I began working with kids with autism and traveled around the world to teach parents how to help their children flourish.

Create conditions for learning

Much of what I learned and taught over those years was about creating the optimal conditions for learning.

Kids with autism, even more than the rest of us, respond to their environment – the emotions of people around them and the situations they are in. Even more than the rest of us, they don’t respond to pressure.

When you show up compassionate, loving, and nonjudgemental, you are more likely to foster an environment for learning.

Where are you in the learning process

I love the steepest parts of the learning curve – those phases where I go from nothing to something. In these earliest stages of learning something new, I forgive myself my mistakes and embrace “bigger’s mind.”

As Seth Godin describes in The Dip each phase of learning is different and comes with different experiences.

It is helpful to know where you are in the learning process. Knowing where you are and where to put your focus makes progress much easier.

Purpose @ work

I was in Puerto Rico earlier this month to spend time with my best friend, who’s managing lymphedema in the aftermath of breast cancer.

Among the many things my friend does each day to maintain their health, they receive manual lymph drainage massage.

I’ve been around a lot of massage therapists, physical therapists and bodyworkers of every stripe. But watching my friend’s practitioner do manual lymph drainage, I was in awe of the practitioner giving this unique form of massage.

Afterwards, my friend said that it was her calling.

Movement as a business

I’ve had more than a few different careers in movement: as a lifeguard, personal trainer, Feldenkrais practitioner, working hands-on with kids with autism, a hand model, as a professional dancer, acrobat, and more.

Years ago, I decided that there are better ways to make a living than selling my time by the hour, and compete with the thousands of other personal trainers selling bigger muscles, fat loss or pain relief. I’ve gone on to build three successful lifestyle businesses in industries that have nothing to do with movement.

I stopped pursuing movement as a professional calling because all of the different ways I’ve seen people do it as a profession don’t look appealing – or especially challenging – to me.

I don’t want to work as a personal trainer or “movement coach.” I dropped out of physical therapy school. I don’t want to “train the trainer,” offer online courses, or work with kids with autism anymore.

All the models I’ve seen have limited upside and don’t especially challenge my business-orientated brain.

But since hearing and watching this person practice her “calling,” I can’t stop thinking about it.

Ikigai

The Japanese have a word “Ikigai,” which translates loosely to your life’s purpose. The works that lies at the intersection of what you love, what you’re good at, what the world needs, and what you can get paid for.

I’ve never been happier between my work at Zander Media and Responsive Conference and my daily movement practice. But as the New Year approaches, I think it is worth considering this idea of “purpose,” our unique work.

This isn’t a call to arms, so much as a question to consider: What’s your ikigai, the work that you feel called to do?

Until next week,
Robin

I recently sat down with an entrepreneur who is nine months into building his business. He described the trials and tribulations of figuring out his business structure, landing his first few clients, and collecting invoices.

I don’t denigrate those challenges. Starting a business is hard! But having built four successful businesses over the last fifteen years, I’m very familiar with those early stages of building a business.

In 2021, I grew Zander Media to more than 10 full-time employees. We were booming! And during that growth, I went through an era of learning and challenge unlike anything I’d experienced before. We sold and delivered larger projects, I hired and fired more people, and I nearly burnt out.

Then, the economy changed and we had to downsize.

I went through a learning portal – a very intense trial of learning and growth. And then I backtracked – I stepped backwards and found myself at a smaller, more predictable stage of the business than I’d been at before.

I haven’t crossed a new portal of learning at Zander Media since 2022, and probably won’t until the business surpasses our previous metrics – in people, project scope, or sales.

Because that’s how learning works.

Every time we step through a portal we learn something new about ourselves. We become a new person. And we can’t step back.

Until next week,
Robin

There’s a social media account I like called Nature is Metal. Their content is not for the faint of heart. Regularly, I’ll open Instagram to see a beautiful bald eagle tearing out the guts of a snake, or a baby hippopotamus getting torn apart by a lion.

Nature is Metal documents the stunning absurdity and fragility of life.

That is the natural world I grew up in. As a child, I scaled alpine mountains in the Sierra. In high school, living in the cloud forest of Monteverde, Costa Rica, I would run miles into the forest at dusk, knowing that if I fell and hit my head, nobody would find my body.

Nature is metal. It is an unsympathetic universe. Though we don’t often consider it, life is that tenuous. That humans continue to strive is magnificent, absurd.

A decade ago, my best friend told me, somewhat brutally, “Nobody’s coming.” That’s shorthand for “Nobody is coming to save you.”

I’ve always wanted to believe that someone, somewhere would be there to support me. And I was fortunate enough to have people to support me early in life when that really mattered.

In 7th grade, in a deep depression, my parents took me out of middle school and homeschooled me for a year. Then, bored in high school, my sister found a Quaker school in the cloud forest of Monteverde and I spent a semester studying abroad.

Those two experiences came, in part, through the good graces of other people. At the time, it felt like someone literally saved me, but, of course, I also had agency in those experiences.

Self-reliance is complicated by the fact that humans are co-dependent. We need other people in order to survive.

But ultimately we are all responsible for ourselves. There isn’t anyone else. Ferocious self-reliance is a good thing. There isn’t anybody coming to save you – and there’s a lot of utility in that belief.

Nobody is coming in sales

I spent the last year selling, and writing about sales. In the months leading up to Responsive Conference I took several thousand meetings in order to sell out our summit.

There were many moments where I desperately wanted somebody else to solve the sales problem for me. At the end of a long day of 10 hours of meetings, I’d briefly wonder if someone would give me a magic bullet. (Hint: there isn’t one.)

Eventually, I came back to the realization that nobody was coming. I could ask for advice, but the solutions and work had to be my own.

This is always true in sales, and in business. There is nobody coming to help you build your business or to earn your money. Nobody will ever care as much about your business as you do.

The work remains yours to do.

Nobody can find you a great partner

I’m in an exciting, new relationship. But over the last 20 years, I’ve gone on a lot of first dates! I’ve tried hundreds of creative ways to meet potential partners.

I’ve tried new sports, asked business associates for personal introductions, hired professional matchmakers, and even paid for advertising.

Once, to win a bet, I went on 13 first dates in 48 hours!

Hearing about my new relationship, a friend recently asked me for dating advice. I told him that, as with business, there is no guarantee of a successful outcome. Continue becoming the best version of yourself and just keep striving.

Nobody else can solve this problem for you.

Eat what you kill

I suspect that Nature is Metal is popular not just because it shows stunning, graphic imagery from the natural world. The content highlights how harsh the world is and how insignificant we all are.

Nature is Metal is a reminder that nobody is coming.

May we be so fortunate as to have people to support us when we are too young or too frail to support ourselves. And may we all have the compassion to do the same for others.

When you believe that nobody is coming, you are forced to stop hoping that life will be fair. Entitlement falls aside. In the natural world, in business, and in life, you eat what you kill.

I stumbled into the phrase SNAFU by accident. Last winter, my father and a close friend both asked me, quite out of the blue, if I knew what SNFU means.

I’d thought “snafu” was an English word that means a small mistake. SNAFU is an acronym that originated during World War II, coined by soldiers to describe the commonplace messiness of war, military bureaucracy, and the human experience. It stands for Situation Normal: All Fucked Up.

I embraced the word for three of reasons:

• the original military dark humor
• my own somewhat mistaken interpretation meaning small mistake or misstep
• A reminder of two people I love

When we’re learning something new, everything comes as the result of trial and error – though baby steps, through small mistakes.

For me, Snafu – the word, not the acronym – has come to mean the small mistakes that result in learning. And the challenging, oftentimes hilarious, lessons we learn along the way.

I’ve been writing this newsletter for 18 months and haven’t missed a single week of publishing! The time has come to reevaluate the purpose of the newsletter, what I’m trying to accomplish with it, why I write it, and what it means.

Origin stories

I’m fascinated by origin stories because it is during those periods that character gets made.

I’m less interested in T.E. Lawrence’s exploits in Arabia, and more about how he came to become the world-changing character he was.

I’ve been a longtime fan of Tim Ferriss. But then the podcast and books he’s known for, though I’m intrigued by his come up – by who he was during his most difficult times.

​Starting Robin’s Cafe in 3 weeks, and then selling it on Craigslist is one of my origin stories. Those early days of building my brick-and-mortal business made me who I am today.

Snafu is my attempt to document lessons learned over the last decade I would have enjoyed reading 5 and 10 years ago.

Advice I wish I’d had

Years ago, as a member of his Behavior Design lab at Stanford, BJ Fogg told me not to try to persuade the unpersuadeable. That is a moment I’ll never forget.

Snafu is my attempt to document lessons learned for myself, so that I remember them.

Sitting down to write each day forces me to clarify my thinking, to articulate my beliefs.

Snafu is my effort to document my own and other people’s learnings, to learn from the mistakes that make us who we are.

The crafts of writing & teaching

I’ve always loved the craft of writing. But up until recent years I was too ashamed of the potential of a typo to publish most of what I wrote. I still cringe when someone points out grammatical mistakes in my work, but I’ve learned to also say “Thank you.”

Snafu is my attempt to train myself to write. Maybe not John McPhee quality of writer, but someone who can assemble words in a way that might impact people.

I’ve been very fortunate in my life, and met a lot of people along the way who’ve shaped my learning. Teachers and friends have turned up at just the right time, when I needed a lesson or a next step.

Sometimes the right nudge at just the right time is all someone needs to transform their life or work. Change comes through minuscule steps – right up until those changes transform your trajectory. This newsletter is my attempt to offer small steps, and to make those steps smaller.

My hope is that Snafu might be a platform for some of those lessons for others.

What it all means

Life is short, and then we die.

We are tiny, insignificant on a large globe, and our Earth is insignificant against the scope of the universe.

I like gallows humor inherent in the acronym SNAFU because that humor recognizes our insignificance against the backdrop of the universe, and laughs, anyway.

That Snafu means “Situation Normal: All Fucked Up” is hilarious. Even more funny to me is that I’ve used the phrase “snafu” all my life without even knowing that acronym.

As Maya Angelou said, “When you know better, you do better.” That’s how learning works. We make the same mistakes until we learn to outgrow them, and then we make different mistakes until we outgrow those.

Life is a process of making mistakes again and again. Until we learn better. Hopefully, those mistakes are small enough that we don’t die, learn, and grow.

Until next week,
Robin

I’m frequently doing ridiculous self-experiments like eating just three ingredients for six months, sitting in freezing cold water, or selling a cafe on Craigslist.

When I first read the Respnsive.org manifesto and started talking about the “future of work,” someone offered me the question: “Is this experiment safe to try?”

That phrase has become a guiding principle for my personal or professional experiments since.

​As I wrote about recently, experiments can feel risky. “What if we tried…” feels like going out on a limb. That’s true for personal experiments like my cold plunge and for professional experiments like hiring a new employee or implementing a new process.

Change often feels scary, expensive, and difficult.

We think of change as a permanent state; experiments are big efforts that take a lot of work to get moving. And once an experiment has been started, it can’t be changed.

But actually, the opposite is true. Real change occurs through the small, day-to-day moments. Experiments can be tiny habits; tests in a slightly new direction.

Next time you’re trying out something new, ask yourself, “Is this safe to try?” Not for the rest of the year, or the rest of your life, but in this moment. Then try one small test at a time.

Until next week,
Robin

When I first walked into a gymnastics gym, I had zero experience with gymnastics or acrobatics of any kind. Nor did anyone else I knew! I’d never seen gymnastics in the Olympics or otherwise. But the moment I walked into that gymnastics warehouse and saw someone doing giants on the high bar, my life changed.

I’ve spent thousands of hours and most days of my life since practicing some form of acrobatics.

Life isn’t binary. I didn’t decide in that moment to spend the rest of my life practicing and performing acrobatics. But I also didn’t need more evidence than that initial moment to know I had to pursue the sport.

Speed matters. In business, being able to execute quickly is a competitive advantage – the difference between success and failure. In the most severe cases, the speed of decision making is the difference between life and death.

You’re always collecting evidence

We are always collecting evidence. I didn’t realize it before opening Robin’s Cafe, but I’d been assessing neighborhoods for decades. Was a neighborhood getting better or getting worse? What makes a great coffee shop? I’d lived within a few blocks of Robin’s Cafe for years, and knew – without needing to think about it – the ins and outs of my neighborhood.

When it comes to making fast decisions, we’ve already collected a lot of the evidence we need.

Take a small step, and see

I’m all for jumping into the deep end. I’ve been accused of taking big risks. But it is possible to do so without diving head first into tge metaphorical pool without first knowing how deep the water is. (I’ve had enough concussions, thank you.)

When you’re starting a new business, writing an article, entering a new relationship, working with a new client, begin.

Once you decide to act, the only recourse is to take a small step and see what happens.

Skepticism = brakes

People say that a healthy dose of skepticism is important. They’re wrong.

Don’t confuse skepticism with caution. Proceed with enough caution that you don’t get hurt, or that if you do, the injury is recoverable.

I don’t want anyone to be taken in by scammers. But skepticism is unnecessary.

Skepticism is a way of slowing yourself down. It clouds your perspective; makes what you are seeing and evaluating less clear. Don’t use skepticism as brakes when simply slowing down will do.

Protect the downside

When Richard Branson started Virgin Airlines, he negotiated a deal to protect the downside.

Starting an airline is capital-intensive. The industry is notoriously difficult. But Branson persuaded Boeing to lease him a second-hand 747 airplane with an unusual stipulation. If Virgin Atlantic failed to become profitable, Boeing would buy back the aircraft.

When you’re doing something new, fast, or risky for the first time, consider how to protect yourself in the worst case scenario.

Be all in

Once you’ve decided to attempt something audacious, be all in. Instead of considering what might go wrong, look for things that might go right.

Don’t disregard the risks. Don’t speed up just because you’re excited. But also don’t nay-say your own conviction.

Once you’ve committed, be all in.

Until next week,
Robin

I first heard the term “self-experimentation” as an undergraduate in behavioral psychology

My professor gave a few examples of his own. He went a month with no sugar, which made carrots taste unbearably sweet. He tried sleeping with his head lower than his feet, which felt miserable and his wife refused to continue. And more.

I think he would have enjoyed teaching an entire seminar about self-experimentation, but he only introduced the concept, and we were left to explore for ourselves.

Which I did.

First through athletics, but then across diet, romance, work, and every other domain, I’ve run thousands of self-experiments.

In 2023, I went more than a month without food. In 2024, I ate three ingredients for five months. I sit in freezing water for several minutes every morning. All from an insatiable desire to answer the question, “What if…?”

In work and throughout our lives, experiments can feel like big endeavors. To lose fat, you need to Diet with a capital D. Gaining muscle is assumed to be hard, with a side of suffering. (For the record, I put on 15 pounds of muscle during my bison and zucchini diet earlier this year.)

In our workplaces, experiments are even harder. As an employee, you might get fired. As a boss, I might get sued.

Experimentation requires enough space to try something new. You have to be able to consider whether this experiment is worth trying, evaluate the potential outcomes, and survive the impact.

But the truth about running an experiment – whether self-experimenting with diet or implementing a new process at work – has huge potential upside.

Start small

Every time I think I’ve fully grokked this idea, I find new dimensions of “starting small.”

Popularized by BJ Fogg and discussed in his book Tiny Habits, the smaller you can make an experiment, the easier it is to try.

Progress comes through small steps that eventually create dramatic change.

As Buckminster Fuller said, “There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.”

Make it reversible

In physical movement, there’s a concept of “reversibility.” A well-executed roll in Brazilian jiu-jitsu can be paused midway through and reversed. All non-dynamic movement can be assessed for quality by whether it can be reversed at any time.

Whenever we changed the menu at Robin’s Cafe, that experiment created some new challenges for my employees who had to learn the new recipes.

But a new menu that is rolled out can also be rolled back, and I could talk to each employee in advance to see how they feel about the new concepts.

In running experiments, ask yourself “Is this reversible?”

Measure impact over the long term

When trying a new diet or implementing a new process, it is natural to want to see changes immediately.

But lasting change doesn’t happen overnight. It happens over weeks, months, and years.

The quicker something is to implement, the more likely it is to flip back to its previous homeostatic state. The longer the period, the more you’re likely to see lasting change.

Measure in decades, not in days.

What did you learn?

Throughout each experiment, ask yourself “What did I learn?”

When experiments fail – like the first and fiftieth time I tried to give up sugar– this is a question that kept me going. And when you are making progress, this is a way to celebrate and expedite progress.

I always want to remain capable of change and reinvention. In business, I aspire to build a learning organization that can equally adapt to our rapidly changing world.

To succeed in the world today, you need to be able to constantly reinvent yourself and your work. That starts with the question, “What did I learn?”

Until next week,
Robin